14 July 2014 - 15 July 2014
Palais des Nations, Geneva
IIASA at Preparatory Committee for the Third United Nations World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction
Dr. Reinhard Mechler, Deputy Director of IIASA's Risk, Policy, and Vulnerability (RPV) Program, represents the research community in general and IIASA in particular as a key speaker at the Preparatory Committee meeting for the Third UN World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction in 2015 on 15 July 2014. The PrepCom will begin to develop the future framework for disaster risk reduction to be agreed in Sendai in 2015.
Through the intervention of key discussants from member states, the private sector and the research community, the technical workshop on “Investing in disaster risk reduction” will examine how investment decisions adopted by both the public and private sectors can:
- prevent the construction of disaster risk in the future,
- reduce existing levels of risk, and
- strengthen resilience to absorb loss and recover.
In a session with Mexico and the Netherlands, Dr. Mechler will emphasize the role of disaster risk-sensitive investment in building disaster resilience. The prevailing mindset has been one of managing crisis as opposed to managing risk, and consequently the volume of investment in disaster risk prevention and reduction remains small relative to spending on crisis response and recovery.
Expected outcomes
- Exchange experiences on good/bad practices in managing disaster risk in public and private investment.
- Discuss innovations and pathways to promote disaster risk-sensitive public and private investment in post-2015 societies.
AT IIASA, Dr. Mechler is involved in managing the RPV Program as Deputy Director. Moreover, he has had a leading role in the following projects: Flood Resilience, Enhance, IMPACT2C, and ECONADAPT. His research focuses on the economics of risk management and climate change and his specific research interests include catastrophe risk modeling, the socio-economic impacts of extreme events and climate change on development, the use of novel risk financing mechanisms for sharing disaster risks, and the assessment of the efficiency and equity of climate change response measures.
